FOX Broadcasters Agree INDYCAR’s Hybrid System Will Make For Fascinating Indy 500
James Hinchcliffe, Will Buxton and Townshend Bell (Photo courtesy of FOX Sports)
By Dennis Krause
FOX Sports will broadcast the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500. It’s the first time the network has been involved in televising the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”. By the time the checkered flag falls, FOX will have devoted a whopping 60-hours of coverage during the month of May.
FOX INDYCAR play-by-play announcer Will Buxton is joined in the broadcast booth by 9-time Indianapolis 500 entrant James Hinchcliffe and 10-time Indy 500 racer Townshend Bell on the call of Sunday’s race.
The trio offered their opinions on how this year’s race, the first Indy 500 with INDYCAR’s new hybrid system, might play out.
TOWNSEND BELL: I really think that we're in for an incredible treat and a bit of an unintended benefit of the hybrid as the car is significantly more difficult to drive. That's what you hear from all the drivers.
If you look at the crashes that we've had this year, if you go back to the open test, Takuma Sato's crash there, all the way through to Kyffin Simpson, Marcus Armstrong, Colton Herta, Scott McLaughlin, these are the result of a car that is a little bit more of a handful.
It's been difficult for drivers to adjust around the balance of the car. Everybody seems to be reading from the same sheet of music, which is it's more difficult to drive. Anything that puts a premium on driver talent determining the winner of the Indy 500 is a good thing in my book.
I know that wasn't part of the original design intent, but it has, to me, made the challenge of conquering Indy this year even greater.
So full credit to those that qualified at the front and to those that are going to race at the front on Sunday. They will have earned it.
JAMES HINCHCLIFFE: Yeah, I think when you look at some of the incidents that we've had with the way the cars are handling now, to go fast you have to be even more on the edge than normal. The crashes that we've had have been fast cars, Ganassi, Penske, Andretti, McLaren. These are the big-name guys that are having these incidents because you have to really have the car on the edge to be quick. I think that sets it up for a very exciting situation.
Then you look at how qualifying played out. We have cars to a certain extent out of position, both maybe higher up than you would have expected, some starting further back than they maybe should be. That always is a recipe for an entertaining race.
I still think that maybe on par with the kind of difficulty of the cars to drive right now, the next biggest factor is going to be the weather. If we have a cloudy, cool day, that's a nice, cool racetrack, and that usually leads to more grip and better racing.
I'm excited. As long as the rain stays away, I'm totally fine with overcast and 60 because that's going to make the conditions even more fun for the drivers, which makes it way more fun for us.
WILL BUXTON: I've spoken to a lot of the drivers obviously over the last week and a half. I think what's fascinating for me with the hybrid, the two guys occupying the top two positions on the grid, one of them in Takuma has a lot of experience with INDYCAR, but not with the hybrid. The other, (pole-sitter Robert Shwartzman) has never driven an oval in his life. Both were able to find the feel with the car, able to drive around that extra weight at the rear, and put it in the top two positions on the grid.
Robert was talking the other day that he and Takuma were doing something the others weren't. I asked him about that yesterday. He said they were running way more downforce than anybody else. They got to a place of comfort with the car and were able to extract more from it with fingertip feel than necessarily trimming out to the max and leaving that rear of the car feeling quite loose and quite sketchy, being able to almost take it over the limit, which I found really interesting.
The thing with the hybrid utilization, we've been talking about it all the way through qualifying, is how would drivers deploy. Almost everybody came down to the same methodology during qualifying of where they would deploy usually with the a slow trickle over the lap. Takuma was a bit different.
The fascinating thing now is how do you use it in the race. Obviously there's no push to pass. If you're in a group, you may be able to re-gen by lifting, then have that burst coming out of the corners, utilize on the straights, wherever you want to. But everybody is going to be pretty much in that same position.
If you're the lead car, you don't. It may work a little bit like DRS (drag reduction system) does in Formula 1 that if you're the lead car, you don't have the advantage, but the cars behind do. The race leader may find themselves susceptible to being passed. Once they're back in the group, they get the ability to recharge and utilize it.
This is a step into the unknown that not one of these 33 drivers have experienced before. That I think is fascinating for how this race will play out because none of us know and none of them know.
Pre-race coverage begins at 10:00 AM ET and the green flag drops at 12:45 PM ET.
Dennis Krause has spent decades covering all forms of motorsports, including over 40 Indianapolis 500s, with stints at WIBA Radio, PIT PASS - Radio’s Premier Motorsports Magazine and Motorsports Minute. Follow him on X @DennisKrause500 or motorsportsminute.bluesky.social or motorsportsminute on Threads or MotorsportsMinute+ on Facebook.